allista
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Everything posted by allista
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Um... what exactly do you mean by a "hollow" fuel tank? Something like this? (from Spherical and Toridal tank pack)
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Hmm... at first glance, with instant transfer it looks a bit cheaty; virtually it's a full fledge teleportation. So either you play that card, saying you have the technology, requiring huge amounts of energy, recharging, etc., or you should implement timed transfer. In that case I see some ways to handle accidents and even to "track" the transfer with background processing; in fact, if the host or the target hangars are destroyed in mid-transfer, you can spawn the transferred vessel at the coordinates where it should be at the moment. Another problem is working with the ProtoVessel of the unloaded target hangar to check is the transferred vessel fits and all that; but that's also doable. What bothers me much more is the terrain; especially oceans. How could you decide if the transfer (im)possible due to terrain? I would say, that you need to access planetary height and biome maps for that and perform some heavy calculations to be realistic enough. You may even need to go as far as a real path-finding. And you don't really need the hangars in both cases. A vessel could be placed at any lat-long-alt coordinates on any body as it is. So in the first case you need some new part that acts like teleportation station; with proper FX and all. And in the second I can imagine a mod that is actually a sort of background autopilot. You switch to tracking station and tell a vehicle to move from that point to that one, which it does at some reasonable speed. I would also look at the Routine Mission Manager for some ideas. Also could you describe some in-game scenarios for such functionality as you see them? I mean, why destroy the challenge of transportation to the far reaches of a planet? Cargo planes and VTOLs are more in line with the game's ideology, as I see it.
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I must say, this one was tough! Spend two days to dig out the cause from the depths of KSP disassembled code (oh, what a mess it is; full of crawling and buzzing bugs!). And two more to come up with a workaround. Not without losses, though: no more resource or type switching through the part menu in editor. But now it works with cloning and mirroring correctly. How's it going with your tank types for USI? I'm planning to make a release around the weekend.
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Concerning "engines all over your craft" situation, as it comes forward not for the first time, I want to clarify a few things about my view of the mod and of its intended use: The main job of TCA is to balance the propulsion system of a ship and to help in attitude control. By propulsion system I mean a set of engines that are more-or-less point in the same direction to propel the ship. But if, in contrast, you place engines all over the ship pointing in all directions, then virtually you are trying to build an RCS -- Reaction Control System. But that is a clear misuse, as there are dedicated RCS thrusters and SAS and RCS balancing mods just for that. TCA is not intended to be used as a replacement of RCS. It knows nothing about which engines "are needed" from your point of view, and which are not, because all engines TCA controls are propulsors, they should be firing at all times. In other words, TCA expects a reasonable VTOL or rocket design. It is absolutely possible, even easy to build some bizarre contraption that cannot be used with TCA. But to what end? The "Kill Horizontal Velocity" autopilot operates by adjusting ship's attitude so that the total thrust is directed away from horizontal velocity vector, but its angle to the surface normal is relatively small (no more than 45deg) to prevent flipping over. If you have some problems with its functionality, please, describe them in more detail. Vernor engine is an RCS thruster, whatever its fuel is. Like solid fuel boosters it has constant thrust and thus cannot be used by TCA in a meaningful way. Engine's designation system is on its way, but it is not trivial, so I don't know yet when I will be able to release it.
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Thanks for the report! Will look into it ASAP.
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MM is tremendously useful, but is indeed hard to learn and program. I usually spend about ten test game launches to make working MM configs of TankTypes.cfg complexity.
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It is possible; the Hangar/TankTypes.cfg have explanatory comments, so it shouldn't be a problem. And please, do so! I would gladly incorporate your configs into the next release which is nearing. And if you're a github user, it would be awesome if you could make a pull-request with the changes.
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I don't know anything about these envelopes, so I would be glad if you share your findings!
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I am SO sorry for wasting your time. I'm used to having buttons for other mods always present and part-independent, and I did a lot of testing for other stuff recently where I would launch a single command pod without everything (hence missing button). That's why this took so much time to figure out. Oh boy... And I have never mentioned this anywhere?! The button is indeed appears only when a vessel has engines, lest not clutter the Toolbar or AppLauncher. But I had to document this feature. So that's totally my fault I'm so sorry! - - - Updated - - - I've added the explanations needed to the main post into Instructions. Thank you, SwGustav, for your patience.
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I agree, and as you're not the first who asks this feature, I'll set it as the primary goal of the next release. Thank you for understanding - - - Updated - - - The part not appearing in editor is intended: it is a dummy part. The plugin simply checks if it is purchased before enabling itself in a vessel. So that all ships could receive the functionality as soon as it's unlocked and purchased. And what of the in-game key binding change in the TCA window? Does it work?
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Not at all! Glad that it works at last!
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No, Bob's warning was due to the fact that he have not implemented any kind of tracking of surface attached parts. This is logical, because inflation is an animation that, in principle, could deform a mesh in any way; and as the mod can't know anything about it, it could not track the movement of a surface. The adapter, on the other hand, has mathematically defined surface (it is a solid of revolution of a straight line) and any object attached to it may be moved when the mesh changes. This is something that ProceduralParts do; and my algorithm is partially adapted from PP code. The issue you describe is caused, as I remember, by some random errors in calculations that resulted in NaNs in surface-node position vector. And that indeed caused vessel glitches on launch. But as it was random it was very hard to debug...
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I'll look into that problem. I've encountered it when I was developing the adapter, but thought that it was gone. Thanks for the report!
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'Curiouser and curiouser!' cried Alice The mod indeed disables (or, more precisely, does not enable AppLauncher button) if the Toolbar is present...
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And I was wondering: have I started spamming the mod with unnecessary parts?
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It could be. I can't make any definite conclusions, but I see many exceptions connected to the stock AppLauncher form several mods: WingProceduralManager from B9 ConnectedLivingSpace RealChute But for all I know they may be not the cause, but a symptom of something happening with AppLauncher. In flight there are also exceptions from: Clouds, ScienceAlert, AlternateResourcePanel. And in editor: ProceduralParts, ActionGroupsExtended. But I still don't see any exceptions associated with either Toolbar or TCA - - - Updated - - - Now, I want to ask two dumbest questions: First, with key binding change: haven't you, by any chance, accidentally changed keyboard layout in game sometime before you tired to change key binding? I don't even know if Unity would recognize such situation. But I just don't know what else to think. Second, with Toolbar button: have you tried to enable TCA button in Toolbar's settings? - - - Updated - - - Would you agree to the following simple compromise? - - - Updated - - - Undocking. I'll try to invent some workaround, but that's not an easy one: undocking spawns a new vessel... But could you be more verbose about the first case, so that I could reproduce it?
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I feel that I become annoying, but may I see your output_log.txt too? The log provided by OrtwinS has no errors related to TCA, only many exceptions from other mods. And I don't see how these could affect TCA.
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Could you post the KSP_Data\output_log.txt instead? KSP.log does not contain information about exceptions, which is the most valuable part. I'm still striving to pin down the cause of this issue. I can't reproduce it and don't see the reason to it in neither logs nor code
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I understand) That were just some passing thoughts... I, personally, also like when all the controls are at hand, not hidden somewhere "for advanced users". But I also understand the desire to have simpler (and smaller) interface and functionality that "just works" most of the time. I'll try different variants and see what'll work best. Maybe add this as an option available through the config. Hm... TCA supports both Blizzy's and stock toolbars, preffering Blizzy's when it's installed. The thing to remember if playing with Blizzy's is that each particular button should be enabled in each scene you want it to appear. Are you, by any chance, playing in career mode and have not purchased the TCA upgrade? But if so, the Y should not work also... So it sounds like a bug to me anyway. Could you provide the output_log.txt?
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Try to set the main Steering Gain to 0 instead of PI values. This should effectively disable steering with engines, but leave the balancing. *I'm looking into that issue now...
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Ah, if only I could invent some adaptive algorithm to tune steering gain without the predefined curve... Then again, the present autotuning tries to set the gain to the maximum possible level which does not yet cause oscillations.
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Thanks, I'll explore the log and report back. Meanwhile, you may also set the key in the config: GameData/ThrottleControlledAvionics/Plugins/PluginData/ThrottleControlledAvionics/config.xml <keycode name="TCA_Key">Y</keycode>
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Thanks! Will fix in the next release.
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I'll think about it. It's probably a good idea indeed. Hm... that is strange. I don't have a Win installation to test it, but the code to change the key binding is so simple and stright-forward (and is used in other mods as well), I don't know what could be wrong. Could you provide the KSP_Data\output_log.txt file after you run the game and try to change the key?
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Thanks! No plans 'cause it's just impossible: jets have huge inertia. TCA works with them as with any engines, but they respond to its commands with a delay of many seconds. Of course, it is possible to remove the inertia by config tweaking, but such engines are absolutely unrealistic: turbines are slow to spin up or down. Propellers, on the other hand (provided by other mods like Firespitter or AJE), should have reasonable response time and may be used with TCA. Here's an example of cargo quadrocopter built using electric propellers from my other mod (Hangar):
